Once you’ve decided to start your own fantasy Nascar pool, you’ll need to decide what type of pool to run. The are plenty of options, and your choice may depend on the number and type of participants in your pool. Are you aiming for only the most hardcore fans, or even the most casual? Your choice may also limit the number of participants in the future.

The basic types of pools you can run are pick’em, box and salary cap. You can run all sorts of variations on these types, but generally most set ups come down to one of the three.

Pick’em – Pick your drivers (or cars) from race to race. Can be any number of groups to pick from, and rules about how many times you can take a driver. Can be pre-picked at the start of the season (usually one driver per race), or before a deadline each race. This type of pool requires participants to put a little more effort in if they want to be successful.

Box – Pick your drivers (or cars) from boxes or groups, one from each box. The number of boxes, and drivers per box will change from pool to pool. Generally these types of pools are the easiest to pick, and tend to grow the largest, since they don’t require alot of effort and can be selected quite easily by even the most casual fan. They are usually season long pools, and can feature a limited number of trades.

Salary Cap – Each driver (or car) is given a value, based on previous performance and popularity. Pick a selected number of drivers, while keeping the total salary of your team under the selected total value. These pools generally run season long, and can feature a limited number of trades.

Some people also run their pools more like a lottery, so anyone can participate whether or not they follow Nascar. Usually run just for one race (although several ‘pools’ do them all season long), basically everyone draws a number from 1-43, and they get the car that starts in that position. The highest finishing car wins the pot.

Once you’ve decided on what type of pool to run, you’ll also need to choose some sort of scoring system. You can use the tiered points system that Nascar uses for each race, or you can make up your own based on pretty much anything you want. You can even have some sort of ‘Chase’ reset if you desire. It’s probably best to keep it as straightforward as possible, so it’s not that difficult for participants to figure out what their scores should be each race.

So there’s your next step in setting up your Nascar pool. Again I want to stress to keep in mind the type of participant you want to draw, and the size you want your pool to be when choosing the details of your fantasy Nascar league. The more people you want to draw, the more straighforward you’ll want to make it. If you want it to be a smaller tight-knit group of the same 20-30 people year after year, by all means make it as complicated as you like. Maybe even set up a scoring system that you’d like to see adapted in the Cup series, and see how things would shake out.